Infosec

Insecure Storage in Android # Insecure storage is still one of the easiest ways to recover sensitive data from an Android app during a pentest. Even when an app has strong network protections, it may still expose tokens, cached responses, credentials, or personal data locally. This post is a quick guide to the main Android storage locations and what they mean from a security testing perspective. Shared Preferences # A key-value XML file that stores user preferences such as dark mode or light mode. They are also often used to store access tokens or other kinds of secrets. In itself, that is not an issue, but it makes shared preferences a very interesting target for stealing or overwriting internal files.

For software engineers, it may be easy to assume that no hacker would target our app since it isn’t big or well known. This attitude can lead to recklessness and lower measures for securing data on an app. However, it’s important to remember that data collected by an organization is very valuable. There can also be legal consequences in terms of lawsuits against the business that ensue from leakage of a user’s personally identifiable information (PII). What Is Excessive Data Exposure? # Excessive data exposure occurs when an API response returns more data than the client needs. As a rule of thumb, if a client application needs three fields, for example, you shouldn’t return the whole object.